A Little Intolerance

Modern Spain may be one of the healthiest places in the world for Protestantism. Reason: the Roman Catholic regime of Dictator Franco is just oppressive enough to stimulate it without being ruthless enough to stamp it out.

This is the wry conclusion of Winfred Ernest Garrison, Spanish-speaking literary editor of the Christian Century, who went to Spain last August for the undenominational Protestant weekly. In last week's issue, Dr. Garrison concluded a series of four articles on his findings.

Side Streets Only. How many Protestants are there in Spain? According to Editor Garrison, they are "no negligible minority." Official Spanish sources have asserted that among Spain's 28 million people there are no more than 2,000, but Garrison puts the figure "probably not much below 20,000 . . . about the same fraction of the total population that the Quakers have in the United States." One source of uncertainty about the total, he says, is the Roman Catholic custom of counting anybody who has been baptized a Catholic, even though he may have since joined a Protestant church. This principle works a great hardship upon young Protestants who want to get married, since Spanish law demands that if either partner has had a Catholic baptism, the couple must be married by a Roman Catholic priest. Even "an affidavit from a Protestant pastor that the parties are members of his church," writes Garrison, "is not regarded as 'documentary proof of non-Catholicity.' They still might have had Catholic baptism."

Protestantism in Spain, he emphasizes, is not a foreign faith, but is solidly Spanish and loyally so. "I think there could be no greater mistake than to suppose that Spanish Protestants constitute any kind of focus of revolt against the present regime, even though . . . they favor a kind of civil and religious liberty which is wholly alien to its program."

Spanish Protestants do enjoy some liberties, e.g., they may organize churches, preach in them as they please, train their ministers and print literature for circulation among themselves. However, reports Dr. Garrison, "they cannot lawfully do anything that would be regarded as the public practice of their religion . . ."

Protestant churches may not bear any external symbols to show that they are churches at all. They are not found on the main thoroughfares, but stick to narrow side streets. (However, "many narrow side streets in Spanish cities are very nice streets," writes Garrison. "Moreover, the narrower the streets, the more dense the population.") No public signs or announcements of services may be made, no church literature may be generally circulated, no new churches may be opened without special permission, and no Protestant schools for children are allowed. "For Protestant children the only choice is between Catholic schools and public schools in which Catholic religious instruction is part of the compulsory course."

"Sowers of Evil." Occasionally even these meager rights have been violated by mob action. Six weeks after one such episode, reports Garrison, "the periodical El Iris de Paz ('the Rainbow of Peace'!), by its own description 'a fortnightly magazine of information and guidance, Marian and Catholic'--answered a real or imaginary inquirer who asked: 'Is it lawful to enter into chapels or meeting places of Protestants . . . with the sole idea of disturbing and of destroying the furniture and other articles?' The answer was in three parts: 1) as to 'disturbing,' yes. 'Most certainly it is lawful to enter into such places with the sole idea of disturbing and preventing, by this means, the making of proselytes to their errors.' 2) As to destroying articles used in worship, yes ... 3) As to the purely personal property of the heretics, no. It is not right to destroy that because 'these false teachers do not lose the right to live by the fact of their being sowers of evil.'"

Editor Garrison devotes one of his articles to examining the origins of Spain's state Catholicism. As he entered the country, the state tourist department handed him a pamphlet "containing a defense and glorification of the Spanish Inquisition" and Garrison quotes it at length to show that the compulsory conversion enforced by the Inquisition was undertaken as much for political as "religious" reasons.

The Reformation failed in Spain, says Garrison, not because "the Spanish mind is naturally, congenitally and incurably Catholic," but simply because the church-state's repression of non-Catholicism was so ruthless. How long would such a leader as Luther, he asks, "have lasted in the fires of an auto-da-fe at Seville? Or, even if he had been made of asbestos, what role would he ... have played in Ferdinand's program of national unification by compulsory religious solidarity?"

Backfire. Spanish Protestantism today, "like the church in the catacombs," says Garrison, "has turned its legal disabilities to good account and has reaped spiritual benefits from its material weakness."

Every Protestant pastor to whom Garrison talked told him of gains; e.g., one of Madrid's larger congregations reported its membership had tripled since the end of the civil war nearly twelve years ago. Church services everywhere seemed to be attended almost to capacity. One of the chief reasons for this growth, thinks Garrison, is that the government prohibition of church publicity makes laymen more zealous in bringing others into the church. "There isn't a preacher in America who wouldn't rather have his laymen . . . constantly cover the neighborhood with quiet personal invitations to church than have all the newspaper and billboard advertising that money could buy."

His conclusion: "It may reasonably be concluded that the policy of repression has backfired rather badly. There is something to be said for the proposition that a little intolerance is a dangerous thing."

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